Category | temptation

Complacency is one of the biggest dangers for people with severe allergies. I’m a prime example. It had been 10 long years since a severe latex allergy had seriously threatened to end my life. Believe me, it’s terrifying when you suddenly swell up like a balloon and can’t breathe. But then years rolled by and I forgot just how serious an allergic reaction can be.

In the classic tale of the two frogs, one is placed into a pot of boiling water and is so shocked by the experience that it quickly jumps out. The other is lowered into a pot of cold water over a low heat. The heat is gradually turned up to boiling point, but the frog doesn’t realize the subtle change in temperature and allows itself to slowly boil to death.

Glen, a longtime family friend, took a spill inside his home and fractured his neck. Fortunately, he didn’t need surgery. His doctor fitted him with a neck brace and instructed him not to bend, lift, or turn until his neck had healed. This meant that he had to move his entire body to see anything outside his direct line of sight. He could focus only on what was directly in front of him.

I’ve endured many cycles of success and failure in my long struggle with healthy eating and consistent exercise. Whenever my efforts fail, however, it’s because I’ve succumbed to the allure of something that seemed to offer me true pleasure: another slice of apple cake with fresh maple frosting or a series of leisurely mornings where I don’t have to drag my body out to the road for another run. The truth, of course, is that poor nutrition and a lethargic body yield nothing good at all.

A little boy’s mother baked a batch of cookies and placed them in a cookie jar, instructing her son not to touch them until after dinner. Soon she heard the lid of the jar move, and she called out, “Son, what are you doing?” A meek voice called back, “My hand is in the cookie jar resisting temptation.” It’s funny to think of a person trying to resist temptation with their “hand in the cookie jar.” This is as much a challenge in our culture today, as it was for the Ephesians.

A 71-year-old woman was outside her home when a swarm of killer (Africanized) bees began stinging her. Neighbors called firefighters who rushed to the rescue—only to find the woman covered in a “suit of bees.” A blanket was thrown over her and she was carried into a neighbor’s house. Surprisingly, she survived more than 1,000 stings!

A German bank employee was in the middle of transferring 62.40 euros from a customer’s bank account when he suddenly nodded off. His “power-nap” took place while his finger was still on the “2” key, resulting in a 222-million euro (300 million dollars US) transfer into the customer’s account. The sleepy state of the worker nearly became a nightmare for the bank, all because he wasn’t being alert.

At a recent kids’ function, I watched two boys play a jousting game on an inflatable “fighting” ring. Each boy was instructed to stand on an inflated pedestal and use an oversized pole shaped like a Q-tip to knock the other off his perch. The one who fell off first would lose.

When the temperature dipped to -27 degrees Celsius in my city, newscasters cautioned the public against going outside. An authority in a neighboring state declared, “In 10 minutes you could be dead without the proper clothes.” After hearing warnings such as these, my husband said what I was thinking: “I think I want to go outside . . . just to feel what it’s like.”

When my twin sister and I were 5 years old, we began counting the money we had in our piggybanks. It turned out that one of us had more than the other. To our young minds, this just wasn’t right. So, we decided to balance our accounts by helping ourselves to our mother’s money!

This is the last snack I’m going to eat today, you tell yourself. Then 5 minutes later you’re looking for another one! Michael Moss, in his book Salt Sugar Fat, reveals how food companies study ways to “help” people crave junk food. Some of the food industry’s biggest names hire “crave consultants” to determine people’s “bliss points”—the conditions when food companies can optimize consumers’ cravings. One popular company spends $30 million a year to determine the bliss points of consumers.

I enjoy driving at night and seeing the warmth of a well-lit house permeating the velvet darkness around it. Regardless of what the neighborhood may look like in the daytime, the contrast of the light in the night makes even the least attractive places appear inviting. Flip the image, though, and a boarded-up house on a sunny day becomes an antagonistic sight, even to the most tenacious of visitors.

Q: Does God continue to forgive if we keep on sinning in the same way again and again? I'm not able to overcome a specific temptation and find myself circling through forgiveness and sin again and again. Will God kill me as He did in Old Testament for sin? I am scared and worried. —Ebenezer

I was 7 years old when I was first exposed to pornography. Some kids had found it, and I naively agreed when they offered to show it to me. In today’s digital world, the stakes are much higher. More than a frozen picture in time, the power of video erodes what little innocence remains in our world.